Living in the Culture

Sin is like this black hole in the Milky Way.  Get close to it and it sucks you in.  It’s enticing.  It calls us.  It knows exactly how to appeal to our fragile egos and pleasure centers.  It convinces us that pleasing self, even temporary pleasure is worth selling the whole family home place.  The allure of sin is like honeysuckle, it’s fragrance is overwhelming.  Paul had lots to say about sin.  He captured mankind's epic struggle with sin in Romans 7.  Paul, the Jew of all Jews, the scholar, missionary and author puts skin on our struggle in terms we can understand:

                                                                                             

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For dI delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members fanother law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from gthis body of death?

I resonate with David’s brutally honest confession in Psalm 51:  For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.   I hear you David.  No one, no one knows, understands and sees my sin like me, except God, and while He gives me free reign to choose sin and go against His will, it breaks His heart.   While I’d rather focus on the sins of others, I don’t have to go beyond my bathroom mirror to see the biggest sinner of all.  How can I offer commentary or critique on the sins of others when mine is glaring and ever present?

Sins of jealousy, envy, judgment, gossip, cynicism, flesh, pride, and spiritual arrogance are easily ignored when the sins of others catch the headlines.  Former Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino and the recent Secret Service Columbian Sex Scandal are just two examples of how we rationalize or justify our sin.  We reason, “I’m bad, but I’m not that bad!”  Yes I am.  And so are you!  We are ALL flawed, fallen and broken.  And without Christ we have no hope in this battle that is as old as Eden.  Back to Paul at the end of Romans 7 and into Romans 8:

                                                                                                                               24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from gthis body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.  8:9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact xthe Spirit of God dwells in you. yAnyone who does not have zthe Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of ahim who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus4 from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies bthrough his Spirit who dwells in you.

Did you catch it?  The life-giving, grace-drenching, accomplished work of Christ means we no longer have to live under the eternal assassination of the soul.   And that gives us direction, purpose, guidance power, resolve and hope as we face our daily (sometimes hourly) struggle with sin.   Confession and repentance are the result of the convicting work of the Spirit.  This is the gateway to daily self-denial and cross-bearing as we attempt to follow Jesus.  

I'm not worried about the sins of others, or those who are confessing and trying.   I’m more concerned about my own and those who have trouble acknowledging their sin and revel in the sins of others.  God help us to be more like the beggar in Jesus' story of the two men who stood to pray in the temple:  Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.